Moondog

Hoarcat pride base is great. Can you do a tutorial on how you built it pleassseee?

Cool ice golem. I like your colour choices.

Great crew.

Sweet, I like your colour choices. Nice bases are they resin?

Cute kitties! Waldgeists are ace too.

Yan Lo has some new buddies!

Well I have to say of all my masters Yan Lo is the one I do best with. Here is my general "go to crew" which I'll take for schemes and strategies that allow the bulk of my crew to stay together. 50ss: Yan Lo (+Reliquary) Soul Porter Ashigaru x 4 Chiaki (no upgrade) Izamu (no upgrade) Toshiro (+Command the Graves) The plan is simple. To begin with in the early turns Yan Lo is positioned within 8" and LOS of as many Ashigaru as possible. The Ashigaru are in front of the whole crew. This is to maximise chi when the Ashigaru start to go down. Yan Lo needs to get as much chi as possibly and attach ash and spirit ascendant upgrades ASAP. Once he has these he can just cause chaos as I'll be lightning dancing him around and he's pretty solid to take down. I've had opponents start to try and kill him and then totally give up because he's just solid with incorporeal and impossible to wound. If they get a combat monster into close combat with him he can just lighting dance out. I've had opponents just ignore him because he's hard to pin down and tough to kill with those two upgrades, and if this happens you've got a nice advantage! I would say no more than three ancestors because you need a decent amount of cannon fodder to ensure you aren't be out activated and to ensure you have cheap stuff that can die and give Yan Lo chi. Try and choose ancestors that complement each other. I don't use Yin because I like Ashigaru and she has little synergy with them. I like to think my ancestors work well together for the following reasons - *Toshiro buffs the cheap minions and raises them again allowing more chi to be collected when they die (again!). Toshiro is therefore a key piece. *Chiaki can remove slow from anything summoned by Yan Lo or Toshiro (and helps remove nasty conditions on your models). She can collect chi for Yan Lo or Toshiro (always good). *Izamu is there to scare people and he will definitely die which is why reliquary is great with him. Don't want someone going after Toshiro? Stick Izamu in the way. Don't want you opponent to drop a scheme marker there? Stick Izamu there. With reliquary I tend to be very bold with Izamu - I don't mind if he dies and therefore I'll throw him at masters and do unpredictable stuff which can sometimes hopefully throw people off guard. Also who doesn't want a 10ss model coming back into their crew after dying (and then having slow removed from it and a bonus on trigger heal from Chiaki!)? OK so here are some things I tend not to do and situations where it went wrong for me and I learnt from experience. *Don't leave home without cheap minions (minimum of three but preferably 4) - you won't get enough chi and you could be out-activated. Yan Lo is chi hungry the way I play him and if Yan Lo isn't chi 3 with two upgrades as fast as possible he's not going to be powerful and you will be in trouble. Also you need cheap minions to lightning dance enemies into. *Don't leave home without the Soul Porter. He will speed your crew up and can allow you to push out of combat if necessary (I'm looking at Toshiro here because I do NOT want him dying) *Don't leave home without Toshiro and command the graves - you need a good supply of cheap minions for both chi and also for use with lightning dance.

I use the GW white and black sprays. Usually go with white unless there is a lot of metal colours to be painted on the model (I always paint metallics over black) or unless I want the model to be dark looking. I sometimes use brush on Vallejo white primer and it's really good and gives a much smoother finish than the sprays. But I use sprays now because it saves me so much time. I wish I had an airbrush but can't justify the cost!

Very cool. I like it - some good inspiration for me as I'm just completing my Yan Lo crew!

Can you start Toshiro, I need some inspiration! Ta

Some cool looking stuff I like it!

I like Rusty Alice, cool model and good paint job.

Got some Ashigaru painted!! "Thy soul shall find itself alone 'Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone -- Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy: Be silent in that solitude Which is not loneliness -- for then The spirits of the dead who stood In life before thee are again In death around thee -- and their will Shall then overshadow thee: be still." Edgar Allen Poe (1829)

Pretty cool, nice work with the metalics.

Well the 'secret' is that it's not neat at all. if you look up very close as you see below (not too great a picture as the photo has gone a bit blocky due to the camera) it's a bit messy with bits of thinned white paint spreading out in a few places. This is because the start of it was simply me painting in lots of thinned randomly placed paint splotches and lines. Once you have done that, just look at it and see if you can see any skulls / faces start to appear, and then start to fill them in slowly with white and deepen things like the eye sockets with the base colour. It's a technique I learnt following the tutorial here http://fantasygames.com.pl/blog/random-faces-tutorial/ Cheers!

Aww kittays. I like them and their bases. I'm not sure if you wanted them to look cute but they do!

Sweet, that ironsides crew is looking good.

The Waldgeists are prety ace. The water on the bases turned out great as well.

Looks ace!

You're not going to run Hoffman? Mind you I've never had much success playing him.

Cheers argent, I have been practising freehand. They were OK but still something is not quite right with them. Also I have real difficulty painting eyes now, must be an age thing! They are a little wide but I couldn't face doing them again after continuously having to re-do them after mistake after mistake! OK well after a major mental block where I just couldn't think what to do with all that empty space on Yan Lo's cloak and while browsing for inspiration I found a great tutorial - thanks! http://fantasygames.com.pl/blog/random-faces-tutorial/ I probably overdid it a bit with the flowers but hey everyone likes flowers even the undead right? You can also vote for him here - http://www.coolminiornot.com/383304

Nice! I'm liking Yan Lo Crew!

Liking the Chiaki freehand!

OK all done - If you want to vote on coolmini the ink is here - http://www.coolminiornot.com/380702 Cheers On a side note can anyone recommend a good brush on varnish? I have tried army painter, vallejo and Liquitex - all of them seem to change the appearance - or maybe I'm putting too much on?

Nice looking guild crew!